how to click the link using autohotkey in chrome - autohotkey

Question

I'm new to Autohotkey but i'm doing this script where I need to click the link in order to view the printable version of the page. What I do so far is I'm trying to find the link text then clicking enter but no luck opening that link using this method. Any Idea to click this link?
my script so far
Send ^f
Sleep KeySleepSlow
SendRaw Printable Version
Sleep KeySleepSlow
Send {esc}
Sleep KeySleep
Send {enter}
This is the source site and as you can see from the top left "Printable Version" link and on the side is the inspected elements of that link.
Hope anyone enlighten me on this one .

Answer 1

The problem: that's not a proper link
You're struggling to activate that "Printable Version" text that way because, as the source code you shared shows, you don't have a proper link that can be activated with the keyboard! That's just a piece of text (<span>) with an onclick attribute stuck into it that calls the JavaScript function generatePrintWindow, written somewhere else by the page's author, when it's manually clicked with a pointing device.
A solution: click() it with javascript:
For peculiar cases like this, I suggest sending a click to that element with a javascript: URL in the address bar, like this one:
javascript:document.querySelector("#mMainHeader_mHeaderPrintSummary").click()
Here, #mMainHeader_mHeaderPrintSummary is a selector that retrives the element you want to send the click to. That's a # sign followed by what's in the id= attribute you see in the source code.
Or, in this case, you can just call generatePrintWindow because that's all that "link" does!
javascript:generatePrintWindow()
On a browser: focus the address bar with ^L or !d, type one of these, then hit {Enter} to run.
Here's the revised AutoHotKey code:
SendInput ^l{Raw}javascript:generatePrintWindow()
Send {Enter}
Explanation:
SendInput sends the keys to the browser in a nearly instantaneous fashion
^l focuses the browser's address bar
then {Raw} disables the special interpretation of special characters so that we can send the javascript: URL unclobbered
This command runs without any delays and you should only barely notice the action happening in the address bar, if at all.
Test
I wrote part of the HTML I saw on your screenshot here
https://gist.github.com/diogotito/08bb3b01fa236616c750b23c25c6025b
Then I tested the above lines of AHK here
https://bl.ocks.org/diogotito/raw/08bb3b01fa236616c750b23c25c6025b/?raw=true
and the AHK commands worked for me without any Sleep commands in between.
However, this might not work on Firefox due to an open bug regarding bookmarklets and CSP.
P.S.
If you ever want to activate an actual activable link with the keyboard on Chrome, I suggest pressing Ctrl⏎ (^{Enter}) from the Search bar after you get the desired link highlighted instead of hitting Esc then ⏎.
Saves a keystroke!
On Firefox it's even better: just type ' to start searching in the links only, F3 to jump between matches, then a single {Enter} to activate the currently highlighted one.